Bihar has set out to match Mumbai with its own version of the Marine Drive. The 21.5km Ganga Path, coming up in Patna by June 2015, will be one of the country’s biggest public-private-partnership projects at an estimated cost of Rs 2,234.46 crore. The Bihar State Road Development Corporation will in November finalise one of six leading construction companies that it has shortlisted. The government has signed a deal with Transparency International to ensure transparency in the bidding process.

With only about 2,000 Gangetic river dolphins left in India, down from tens of thousands just a few decades ago, the Bihar government is planning to set up Asia's first research centre to strengthen conservation efforts to save the endangered mammal.

An official in the chief minister's office said the Gangetic dolphin research centre would be set up in Patna, where dozens of dolphins can still be seen in the stretch of the river near the state capital.

Bird flu or avian influenza is threatening Bihar's poultry industry and an SOS has been sent to the central government on tackling the deadly H5N1 virus as the state lacks the resources to do so, a Bihar minister said.

The SOS was sent after the Bhopal-based High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) attributed the deaths of a number of crows across the state to the H5N1 virus, Animal Husbandry Minister Giriraj Singh said.

Bhagalpur, Feb. 19: The administration has stepped up vigil against poachers to save migratory birds at the eco-friendly Gangetic diara in the district.
The diara (sandbar) is considered a green belt and was in the news recently when the residents of Dharhara, a village in the riverine area, decided to celebrate the birth of a girl by planting saplings. But there are places in the Naugachia sub-division where many people earn their livelihood by catching and selling migratory birds.

These areas fall in the 63km-stretch between Sultanganj and Kahalgaon.

Worshipped in Hindu religious texts as the mount of Lord Vishnu, the rarely sighted Garuda (Greater Adjutant) is flourishing in a remote village in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district. With this important discovery, Bihar has joined Cambodia and Assam on the world’s avian map as the third site of its kind where the Garuda nests and breeds. The population of these birds — red-listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — has shown nearly four-fold increase in the last four years in Bihar.

Patna: An alert was sounded on Monday as the overall flood situation in Bihar worsened following heavy rains in the catchment areas of the rivers and the discharge of water from two dams in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. CM Nitish Kumar has directed the state water resources and disaster management departments to be on high alert and intensify relief and rescue operations.

With six more deaths reported from several areas today, the toll in the powerful earthquake rose to eight in Bihar, official sources said.
While Darbhanga accounted for four deaths, one each was killed in Nawada, Nalanda, Bhagalpur and Sheorhar districts.

With the submergence of thousands of villages in nine districts in Bihar appearing inevitable due to an alarming rise in the water levels of the Sone and the Ganga, chief minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday conducted an aerial survey to oversee the preparations for evacuation and relief distribution.

Thirty people died in the last three days as the Ganga river flooded over half a dozen districts including Bhagalpur, Purnea and Katihar, with 10 deaths in Bhagalpur alone. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, who conducted an aerial survey of the 14 districts affected, said that over 500 relief camps had started functioning, with 55 such camps in Bhagalpur. Besides Ganga, water level has also risen in Kosi, Kamla and Gandak. West Champaran, Vaishali and Begusarai reported four deaths each whereas Saharsa reported three deaths because of floods.